#wpw – “American Graffiti”

American Graffiti. You are walking downtown and see graffitti in an unlikely place. Graffiti you’ve never seen before- and it concerns someone you know.

Amanda Desclarietti is Fountasia Bullets.

I lean closer to the edge of the stone bridge for a better look at the message. It seemed to have been written with spray glue and coated with confetti. There were still colorful scraps littering the ground. Under the confetti message, in blue paint were the words “I’m coming for you”. Attached to the ominous blue message, in red spray paint and a different hand, was “R MOUTH”.

I took my phone out and tried to get a picture, but I couldn’t get the angle right. I sent the best one I could, even though it wasn’t legible, to Amanda.

“Saw this downtown. Says you’re Fountasia Bullets. lol”

I kept walking, let myself become assimilated into the crowd, just another traveler in downtown. I forgot all about the strange graffiti until I stopped at a coffee house for lunch and pulled out my phone. The picture was still open on the screen. Curious, I opened the search engine and looked up Amanda Desclarietti. Everything that showed up- social media, blog, high school and college records, abandoned modeling profile- were my Amanda. I looked up “Fountasia Bullets”. According to the articles that popped up, Fountasia Bullets was either a single drag queen gangster or a whole gang of drag queens that had taken to terrorizing LA, leaving a trail of bodies and glitter.

My phone buzzed with a text from Amanda. “Lol. Where are you?”

“Downtown”

“I didn’t think there were many Amanda Desclariettis”

“There aren’t. I checked.”

“Lol.”

I finished my shopping and passed over the stone bridge again on the way back. The confetti graffiti wasn’t there.It didn’t even look like it had been cleaned up- it looked like it had never been there at all.

I leaned over the edge to confirm the disappearance. It was gone, but below the formerly graffiti’d wall was something disturbing. Sunlight bounced off of multicolored glitter. When I leaned further I saw the edges of what could have been a pool of blood. My phone buzzed and I recoiled back onto the bridge, heart pounding. It was a text from Amanda.